Name's Jason Thibeault. I'm an IT guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS, science of all stripes (especially space-related stuff), and debating on-line and off. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

EVENTS

Movement cohesion

Movement atheism is not a cohesive entity. Heads of orgs like American Atheists, in full-throated promotion of people like Jaclyn Glenn — especially those videos that attack movement feminists for being too firebrandey and poisoning movement atheism with all their “social justice warrior” stuff — they’ve evidently chosen sides. Let’s not mistake that there are, in fact, sides to choose in what amounts to a fundamental division between feminists and antifeminists within atheism. AA has chosen, expressly, the side of the antifeminists, and they’ve framed the issue such that the antifeminists are the ones demanding we stop talking about feminist ideas and the toxic anti-woman environment that these antifeminists inculcate in our movement.

Feminists are told to stop fighting. Antifeminists are asked absolutely nothing — they’re the “reasonable” ones for demanding that the status quo be maintained.

Fuck that.

The surest way to earn my enmity, my directed criticism, is to ask us to stop other fights so we can pretend we’re all one big happy big-tent family. It’s what bugged the hell out of me about courting secular pro-lifers at CPAC, it’s what bugged the hell out of me about the ongoing, constant, concerted attacks of big atheist vloggers like Thunderf00t and The Amazing Atheist against feminists despite the absolute hash they make of logic and reason and empathy in doing so. It’s what continues to bug me about basically every organization demanding that we go big-tent and allow every atheist in so we can all talk about how much God don’t real, but don’t you dare talk about the social impact of how we treat half the human fucking race. Not to mention every other issue that gets derided under the umbrella of “Social Justice Warrior”, like trans rights, gay rights, race issues, and every other aspect of humanism that involves having a shred of empathy for your fellow human being.

The necessity of feminism is evidenced by the comments everyplace it’s mentioned in anything but a negative, straw-feminist casting (take Laci Green’s recent video’s comments, for example). Especially so any time it’s mentioned in atheist settings, because there are precious few that aren’t expressly antifeminist and expressly anti-any-social-justice-but-secularism in bent, thanks to the vociferous libertarian quadrant of our “community” demographics.

There is no one single community. This inter-atheist fighting is necessary because we have coalesced communities around shared ideals, and there’s a shit-ton of you atheists out there who share almost no ideals in common with me outside of “god don’t real”.

I will not throw my other principles under the bus to be part of your hideous granfaloon.

This is exactly right. I was appalled at the antics of those who went on eight minute rants on YouTube about women atheists, nitpicking everything they saw as anti-male rather than give women the same levels of respect that the misogynists feel they deserve simply for having a dick, or even other women deciding that the dick-owners were right, and feminists were just shrill harpies.

Thank goodness I’m an avid PC gamer, so I was able to disconnect from that horseshit and go stomp Supermutants instead. What a cesspool of uncaring people. I would never want to be in the same “tent” as they. Ugh.

I think you’re on to something. We’re being asked to unite against a tremendous foe, one that’s never presented in specific detail, but nonetheless seems all-pervasive and is hoping to rob us of that which we cherish most. This foe is almost uniformly evil, with the exceptions being the ones who attack their peers with the same language as Glenn and others use. They must be shouted down and silenced at all cost. Don’t listen to their propaganda and lies!

The way some atheists attack feminism, you’d think they were Christians attacking atheists.

I will not throw my other principles under the bus to be part of your hideous granfaloon.

Nor will I. It saddens me that American Atheists is siding with the anti-feminists and people like the Pitters-people who cannot seem to grasp the idea that religious beliefs have an effect on range of social issues. Their inability to understand that there are implications to not believing in a deity boggles my mind. But so long as they whine and moan and actively fight against equality for women, LGBTQI individuals, or PoC, they can go fuck themselves. I’ve no desire to be part of a big tent that allows such bigotry in their midst simply to have everyone together.

Not to mention… big tent for what? Because I’d be willing to set aside certain things in order for some sort of payoff or advancement towards a specific goal. Benches and billboards ain’t it, and paying Dave Silverman to hobnob with wealthy right-wingers sure as shit ain’t it.

It’s one of Atheism’s limits. It’s wrapped around the lack of belief in some thing. But outside of the one narrow area, it doesn’t say anything about what a person actually believes in. And, alas, plenty of Atheists are major A-holes who believe in a lot of awful things.

Funny how the common suggestion made by antifeminist atheists is that feminism is “just like religion” but they use the tactics of creationists fixating on atheists trying to disprove their reasserting their own rights by using tired old tropes. The “Social Justice Warrior” refrain, the “divisive” refrain, the “you should be fighting for rights of X and Y equally” refrain (eliding that X is disadvantaged and Y is privileged as all get out!) — all of it reminds me of creationists using the same few bullets loaded in their rhetorical six-shooters, to be spent in rapid fire then they retire from the field while another anti-feminist warrior steps to the front row to do the same.

Look at how quickly Muscato yanked down his post. Look at how long Dawkins has been providing child care at conventions. The JREF pushed hard to get 50/50 gender parity at TAM. At the last Women in Secularism, someone from the audience angrily asked what CFI was doing about reproductive rights; Debbie Goddard rattled off something like four separate programs.

Every big organization has sided with feminism. Where there’s any clash, it’s at an individual level over what “feminism” means. Glenn is arguing “feminism” consists of granola-munching airheads who whip into an angry frenzy at the merest hint of appropriation, even as she complains about the sexist bullshit aimed at her. DJ Grothe is perfectly fine with “feminism,” or at least a defanged kind that doesn’t deal with any form of patriarchy short of blatant, open discrimination.

That is where the infighting is. And even there, it’s mostly due to a small number of bigoted asssholes who didn’t get the memo, aided by a much larger number of clueless people just parroting along.

Oh Damion, that was a marvelous comment @ 16, really and truly compelling. Just makes me wanna lay down rhetorical arms and love up on some creepy creep like TJ Kincaid, because that scene will win some hearts and minds, boy howdy. Yup. Let’s get it on, baby.

In seriousness, tho, as the MRAs are finally reaching the international spotlight and everyone is finding out how disgusting they are, how long will it be before they find out how overwhelmingly atheist they are, and that they’re socially connected to prominent voices in atheism and skepticism? How well will that advance the cause?

The schism is the only chance organized atheism has to survive the turdpocalypse your side is sowing.

I just… I’m getting sick and fucking tired of this. Relatively little-known atheist makes decent atheist videos, get promoted at different sites, including here, make great points and even says some things in some videos that hint at some decent understand of just what social justice is and makes the occasional remark that suggests that they are aware of the wider workings of the world and then…

BOOM!

“DAMN FEMINISTS DIVIDING MOVEMENTS! I’M NOT A FEMINIST! I’M A GOOD ANTIFEMINIST ATHEIST!”

I literally cannot explain the level of relief and excitement I had when I saw that ZOMGItsCriss joined FTB and then basically started posting actually really good shit. But she appears to be… like… the only one. She’s the only one who fucking gets it. Seems like everyone else who gets it are bloggers.

Okay okay… there’s Some Grey Bloke and… um…

Uh…

Help me out, here…

I was really hoping that Glenn would turn out to be one of the good ones.

I’m starting to look at the whole situation as not so much being about one “movement” that everyone is either a friend or enemy of, but three partially overlapping intellectual/political subcultures which have an array of organizations and informal followers.

[1]”Naturalism”–The best term I can think of for worldviews which reject supernaturalism and includes atheists, skeptics, agnostics,etc.

The agenda of organizations primarily defined by naturalism tends to be limited to arguing for naturalism, criticizing supernaturalism, demanding the right to openly hold such views without being subject to official discrimination and social stigma, and opposing special privileges for religion (creationism and prayer in schools, public religious symbols, etc.)

This population tends to be left-leaning on average but may include people with any political views besides explicitly religious ones.

[2] Those who identify with “Humanism”, “Atheism Plus” and similar concepts.–People with a naturalistic worldview who are also explicitly committed to the ideal of human wellbeing and equality. I’d put myself in this category.

[3] “Progressives”–People and groups whose political and social views and activities promote human wellbeing and equality, wherever they stand on religious and metaphysical questions. Organizations in this category usually don’t have an official stance on matters of faith or lack thereof beyond tolerance.

So people within [2] by definition define themselves a bit more “narrowly” than the other two and are (I would say unfairly) criticized for this, as if they are somehow required to compromise on their basic values and self -definition.

At the same time, I would argue that there is a difference between the hostile demand for Humanism itself to be a “big tent” and Humanists making common cause with others on issues when interests and goals overlap.

On the other side, Protestant fundamentalists, Catholic traditionalists, Mormons and similar people are certainly able to enter into coalitions while retaining their often very exclusive identities.

people who cannot seem to grasp the idea that religious beliefs have an effect on range of social issues.

Yeah, but those social issues don’t (they think) affect them as much as whether or not there’s a cross in the 9/11 museum, so why should they care?

@NateHevens #21:

I was really hoping that Glenn would turn out to be one of the good ones.

The “good ones” are mostly either bullied off YouTube by its toxic environment or leave movement atheism for other subjects (see: Laci Green). It’s akin something that I noticed years ago after several years of blogging on atheoskeptical issues: eventually, you run out of stuff to talk about. Eventually you’ve said all you can say about religion in schools and homeopathy and bigfoot and shit, and everything else feels like repetition. It’s no surprise that people whose interests are broader than “gods don’t real” go off to find other things to talk about, especially since there are generally bigger issues affecting people than whether or not there are gods.

@Damion Reinhardt #16:

What atheism really needs now is more infighting about feminism.

No, what atheism really needs now is the same thing it always needs: asshole spokespeople and billboards! That’s what, line one of the American Atheists charter?

Here’s the thing I don’t get: we all know the famous phrase “religion poisons everything” by Hitchens*. A great line in it’s simplicity and truth. We can see how religion poisons the world in a myriad of ways and some of these ways result in damage that disproportionately lands on minority sub-groups of the human population. The toxic nature of religion manifests itself in sexism, racism, classism, homophobia etc. And atheists like Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris have never shied away from pointing to the real-world examples in their own arguments to convince readers/listeners why they shouldn’t believe and why they should oppose religion. I assume Jaclyn Glenn would also take no issue with citing examples of stoning, burqas, genital mutilation and other ways in which religion harms people and restricts their freedom. So it’s ok to point to these atrocities to sway people towards atheism/sell books but it’s not ok to notice or mention when they fall under a broader set of attacks on a specific group because now that would bring in a feminist/gay rights etc., agenda! Wtf? We can (and should) make everyone aware of the harm that religion does to humans, but only if we don’t mention who the victims are or what attributes they share, lest we politicize the discussion? This makes no sense at all. If we are trying to draw people away from religion in order to diminish the evil that religion does, why would we trash people who want to talk about how to diminish the evil that religion does? I mean Dawkins et al admit that one of the reasons he wants to rid the world of religion is because of things like honor killings that are justified by religion, right? So why is it then verboten to have conversations aimed at actually addressing honor killings?

One doesn’t have to look real far to see the poison of religion. The Supreme Court just gave us a couple pretty damn good examples with five Catholic believers restricting the rights of Americans and used religious freedom as the justification. In a bonus, the rulings targeted women, exclusively in Hobby Lobby and disproportionately in the buffer zone case. In principle this is no different than Sharia Law requiring women in Islamic countries to have their freedom to dress however they like infringed on the basis of somebody else’s silly, centuries-old superstition. Not to mention the physical harms of Hobby Lobby employees who have to risk their lives with unwanted pregnancies and the inevitable terrorist action we will eventually see at an abortion clinic. In both cases (Islamic countries and the US) we have religion restricting freedom and enabling actual physical harm. Now I don’t expect Dawkins or Glenn to cite Hobby Lobby or the buffer zone the next time they want to illustrate the evils of religion (way too Feminist for their blood…) but I fail to see a difference between these and the evils that they WILL cite. Sadly, I’m guessing the answer is that it’s all good so long as nobody mentions the fact that the victims are women (or gays, PoC, the poor etc.) That’s the apparent line that can never be crossed.

*Who just for the record, I used to think was brilliant but I now see more like a very eloquent, sexist, Islamophobic, warmongering broken-clock who just happened to share my non-faith.

I came here from Jaclyn Glen’s video attacking Atheism+ as I didn’t know atheist infighting was a thing, and it bothered, me because it seems atheists have enough opposition without creating more for ourselves.

Having read this I’m wondering if you might be right; I can quite see how religious belief and lack thereof, having an impact as it does on our treatment of our fellow human beings, is necessarily connected to feminism, LGBT and other social justice issues, and I don’t want to be affiliated with people who take a regressive stance on those.

I still can’t shake the desire to reach a compromise position though. Guess I’m a diplomat at heart. Still, good job.

To the extent that feminism entails providing child care at conventions, pushing for gender parity in the movement, and promoting reproductive rights, I haven’t seen anyone fighting about it. If both sides value those things, then probably issues aren’t going to have any impact movement cohesion. Which is good, I’d say.

I kept Damion out of moderation specifically because he posted infrequently, and his posts were so passive-aggressive they were almost amusing in a way.

However, his latest bout of storifying me and others last night really makes me think it’s not a benign sort of passive-aggressiveness. It’s a level of fixation that I need to distance myself from.

I realize that my putting him in moderation here is probably just going to lead to him finding things to storify me on, thus throwing his name in my face repeatedly, despite my stated preference here that he not do so any longer. That transgression against consent is exactly the sort of thing that will crystallize my opinion of him as being “creepy”, though.

He commented on my blog and I broke the link to his site as well as neutering the content of his post, as I recall. One) I know Justin Crapula is or was affiliated with his site, Two) If I let crap like that through moderation, I’d have to respond to it personally, because I don’t have the commentariat FTB has. I don’t feel like wasting my time on it presently.

I don’t want to say “obsessive” because there’s peeps with OCD who don’t need that used as a slur… In avoiding ableism, we are left with “creep” and “stalker.” Time to use the magic of slanguage to kick it up a notch:

Damion seems to be trying to demonstrate that anyone can storify creepy stuff with no comment to prove some sort of point maybe? With his paltry 300 or so storifies he is no where near the king of the obsessive losers, ElevatorGate, with ~30K. Long way to go dude!

I am an atheist. But atheism is not the most important thing to me. Yet the “movement” seems to be saying that atheism must not only be the most important thing, but pretty much the only thing one cares about in order to be part of it. So “movement atheism” can pretty much go fornicate itself (intercourse the penguin!) as far as I’m concerned. I would have donated, I might have volunteered, but the beloved thought leaders have made it abundantly clear that my kind ain’t welcome in this here town. So they can have it. Congratulations, atheist movement, you’ve lost a potential member. Go get your asses kissed by Vacula and Reinhardt and all those shit-for-brains narcissists, but never forget that they will turn on you in a heartbeat if you don’t toe their line.

I agree with the above, it’s boring and counter productive when leaders of a movement try to dictate terms of involvement. Just as well you don’t have to be a signed-up member to share its views. Like the “spiritual” religious who don’t follow a church, atheists can represent the cause while giving the finger to those who take it too seriously and consider themselves the arbiters of how others should act on its behalf.

I agree with those commenters who have been criticizing the video. I watched it and thought it was rather stupid, and that is being kind. But I am having trouble understanding how you go from Dave Muscato’s tweet supporting the video to the conclusion that “Orgs like American Atheists, in full-throated promotion of people like Jaclyn Glenn.”

Maybe I am missing some previous tweets and blogs. But Muscato said on his tweet that his tweet does not necessarily reflect the official view of AA. Has AA issued any statements regarding the feminism/anti-feminism divide or this particular video that warrants the claim that AA is now taking the side of anti-feminists?

No, when you say “orgs like American Atheists”, in promotion of “people like Jaclyn Glenn”, that implies that the org backs her but on the wider scope, it states that orgs LIKE them promote people LIKE her. How many times must an org or that org’s representatives promote antifeminist nonsense before some of the splash from that actually gets on the org?

I am still trying to understand how Dave Muscato’s tweet constitutes AA’s promotion of Jaclyn Glenn’s video or the views expressed in it. Muscato said on the tweet that his tweet does not necessarily reflect the views of AA. Am I to assume he is lying? If so, why?

What statements from AA itself – not tweets from people who work for AA – support the claim that AA endorses the views of Jaclyn Glenn and others like her?

Isn’t the division around politics? There are right-wing, conservative, and propertarian atheists, and there are left-wing, liberal, social-democratic, and left-libertarian atheists. As organized atheism got bigger, and more people across the spectrum began to identify as atheists, some of the left-leaning ones started to be more vocal. And the Right panicked. They wanted the movement all to themselves, like everything else they think they deserve.

These conservatives are right to fight against religious privilege and discrimination in the U.S. However, they are mistaken if they think that that is the last remaining oppression here.

Not to mention every other issue that gets derided under the umbrella of “Social Justice Warrior”…

Every time I see someone use that term seriously, I interpret them as mocking the very idea of egalitarianism and favoring social hierarchy and unmerited status. They seem to find it funny that there could be people who think that justice has not already been realized by legislation.

But the best part is that these critics lack the courage to identify themselves publicly as being against equality, for unearned status, and in favor of injustices that are beyond the reach of laws.

I’m still unsure whether it was in part a thinly veiled attack on Christina Rad for her harsh but well deserved criticism of Jaclyn’s video on Elliot Rodgers wasn’t a misogynist.

I know there can differences in opinion but really stereotyping the opposition is a childish way to ignore the issue. To quote my favorite author:

“It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do bad things.” Terry Pratchett Jingo

How about the fact that AA as a whole has been wholeheartedly endorsing her as a “rising star of atheism”?

Perhaps to you this signifies endorsement of her views on feminism, but it does not to me. Promoting her as a rising star of atheism does not in-of-itself constitute an endorsement of a person’s views on every topic under the Sun. Now maybe AA does actually endorse her views on feminism or the one’s expressed in the video, but your comment above does not establish this claim. To convince me you are going to need more than the mere assertion that it is true. You and others are making a claim here. Time to actually provide something of substance to support the claim. And don’t mistake this as a defense of Jaclyn Glenn. Until the post here, and the ones by PZ and Ophelia, I had never heard of the woman. I watched the video, and as I said up-thread, I was not impressed. But my question about how you get from Muscato’s promotion of the video on his tweet to an endorsement by AA of the views expressed, well I just don’t see it.

Perhaps you’re right. I don’t have a smoking gun. I certainly admit I could be wrong about AA. It’s just that every single time I’ve tried to engage someone from AA on the topic of feminism/social justice, I’ve been immediately shut down and told that “we’re all allies.” Basically, “shut up and go sit in the corner, we don’t care what you think.” Which, in my opinion, doesn’t speak well for their organization as a whole.

Plus, they employ Paul Loebe, who has spent the past couple years going out of his way to be the biggest douchebag humanly possible. I mean, he mocked Helen Keller, for fuck’s sake.

The “good ones” are mostly either bullied off YouTube by its toxic environment or leave movement atheism for other subjects (see: Laci Green). It’s akin something that I noticed years ago after several years of blogging on atheoskeptical issues: eventually, you run out of stuff to talk about. Eventually you’ve said all you can say about religion in schools and homeopathy and bigfoot and shit, and everything else feels like repetition. It’s no surprise that people whose interests are broader than “gods don’t real” go off to find other things to talk about, especially since there are generally bigger issues affecting people than whether or not there are gods.

First… now I legitimately feel terrible. I think the reason I missed Laci Green is because she hasn’t vlogged about atheism in so long that I totally forgot about her gogreen18 channel. But I also just stumbled upon an email I sent to her a long while back asking if she’d ever do an atheism video again. I never got a response. I always thought she was one of the most articulate and brilliant atheist vloggers, and now she’s my favorite feminist/sex-ed vlogger (seriously… she needs to design the sex-ed curriculum for the entire US, IMO). So the fact that I forgot her makes me feel very terrible.

So sorry, Laci.

Second… I see your point.

I guess… I really got caught up in the “atheist movement” via YouTube. In fact, it was Thunderf00t’s “Why Do People Laugh at Creationists” that really drew me in (after the arguments on… yes… Mugglenet… and reading The God Delusion). And the saga of VenomFangX was one of the first big “issues” I really participated in (which is why I defend Thunderf00t against the claims that he just harassed that “poor boy”… I was there and watched it unfold in real time… VFX broke the law multiple times, including false DMCAs and stealing money from a children’s hospital, was a serial harasser himself, was misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic, etc, and at the end of the day… and I do know the problematic wording, here, but can’t think of a better way to put it… brought all of it on himself; he needed to be stopped). So after TGD, my “atheist community” was the YouTube atheist community.

Yet it seems that most of them either left YouTube or are just incredibly terrible people… atheists of the Ayn Rand variety as opposed to… well… the Laci Green variety. And that’s infuriating.

This is exactly the problem, well, one of them anyway, with movement atheism: Atheists don’t agree on anything except “God Don’t Real.” Why not just be a feminist, LGBTQ rights activist, and secularist?

AA also posted that Cinco de Mayo tweet of Dave Silverman in a sombrero that told people to come to their conference in Puerto Rico. Rather than apologizing, Muscato repeatedly insisted that Cinco de Mayo is a Latin American holiday and that a sombrero isn’t an offensive stereotype.

I made a tiny change to the OP in order to curtail arguments about how American Atheists is a sainted organization that can do no wrong because Dave Muscato, their PR director, is “going rogue” on this one. I changed “Orgs like” to “Heads of orgs like”.

I did not make this change because I think AA is not responsible for the splash damage their employees are causing when people like Dave Silverman, their president, and Dave Muscato, their PR director, throw women in general under the bus to cozy up to people who want to undercut women. I made this change only to stop people from these wild tangents. I am fully aware those wild tangents will continue, because the tangent-makers appear to believe that the president and the PR director do not represent significant power within the company, and they appear to further believe that the company will not be affected by the ideologies of the people in these positions.

Davis Collins: I absolutely agree. The problem is, when we try to be, as you say, more intersectional, and we find ourselves being told to shut up about those other things and just be part of a big tent with the same people who are fighting against our other causes.

I would rather movement atheism / secularism become smarter about and more humanist about these other topics, and realise that when they cozy up to those people fighting against our causes, they will not, actually, increase the size of the tent as is their stated desire.

Wes Aaron: that was almost certainly who she was aiming at, between the blonde wig and Rad being the most in-her-sphere person to give her a righteous smacking down over the Rodger video. Having seen those other parts of the ongoing fight, and having seen movement heads promote her odious video about Rodger, I feel confident in saying that movement atheism in general has exactly one path to celebrity within it: fight feminists.

You’re generally right that atheism doesn’t literally mean similarity besides in people’s answer to one philosophical question. But most people who identify as atheists do so because of some broader rejection of magical thinking of any kind, and the acceptance of a worldview that I’ll call scientific naturalism.

Many people, even in progressive environments are under pressure to accept some form of spiritualism or theism. By advocating atheism (by way of naturalism and reason)as an alternative, the “”atheist movement” does a fair amount of good.

But yes, I don’t see where deeply “identifying” with atheism alone is particularly fulfilling–and yes, if one gets caught up in quasi-religious identification with atheist groups, one often ends up having to identify some nasty characters as “our people”

I look at Dawkins` organization and American Atheists and similar groups as people who have sometimes done a good job advocating a particular positive thing, but are scarcely moral guides or communities committed to across the board progressivism.

It’s like organization that promote good nutrition or exercise. Yes, these things are great, but their advocates aren’t necessarily wonderful people.

For my part, I’m a gay man. I’m a Person of Color. I’m a secularist. I’m a Humanist. I’m an atheist. I chose these labels because I feel they describe aspects of my character that are important. I came to secularism and Humanism through atheism. It’s an important part of my journey and I see no reason to throw it away because someone else doesn’t think I should use the label. Also, given the discrimination of atheists in the US, as well as the historical treatment of atheism and atheists, ending that stigma is important. FFS, many people think we’re worse than rapists, despite the fact that not believing in gods doesn’t harm anyone, while rape very much does bring harm to others.

“The surest way to earn my enmity, my directed criticism, is to ask us to stop other fights so we can pretend we’re all one big happy big-tent family.”

Whatever shall I do? An obscure, balding, Canadian white man might get angry if I tell him he’s wrong on all accounts. I’m shaken to my very core, truly.

You and your brand of feminism have done little more than implode a once formidable and unified front of skeptics who were starting to turn the tide in favor of rationalism/atheism/skepticism. Because it’s just a shame that older white men like Dawkins and Hitchens were the ones saying it and not Thibeault, Watson, Myers and Partners, Firm for Feminism and Social Justice? It’s so unfair that paranoid, underachieving, and overly hysterical bloggers don’t get the respect that intelligent hard-workers get.

The fighting is not at all necessary; your faction is more akin to the South seceding from the Union, declaring war, and then forever whining about losing and the following period of Reconstruction. Yes, I am comparing you to the pro-slavery antebellum South in the hope that I make it clear that your faction is a group the rest of us are forced to admit is a part of the larger Union even if we would rather you’d just secede and shrivel up.

You see, the South has always been unfathomably butthurt about losing the Civil War, despite starting it on all accounts while blaming the North for the entire fiasco. Likewise, FtB tools are just flabbergasted and outraged (outraged I tell you) that people could disagree, and express their disagreement and declare which side they’re on. Protip: being hostile, inflammatory, confrontational, and otherwise useless will get you exactly the division you demanded. Thibeault says:

“Heads of orgs like American Atheists, in full-throated promotion of people like Jaclyn Glenn — especially those videos that attack movement feminists for being too firebrandey and poisoning movement atheism with all their “social justice warrior” stuff — they’ve evidently chosen sides. Let’s not mistake that there are, in fact, sides to choose in what amounts to a fundamental division between feminists and antifeminists within atheism. AA has chosen, expressly, the side of the antifeminists, and they’ve framed the issue such that the antifeminists are the ones demanding we stop talking about feminist ideas and the toxic anti-woman environment that these antifeminists inculcate in our movement.”

Before the lot of you decided that atheism must be co-opted to talk about your feelings, general hysteria and post-modernist trite, New Atheism was about turning the tide back against religion. Religion of course is largely responsible for the oppression of LGBT people, women, ethnic minority groups and virtually all marginalized groups throughout history. And who actually started the in-fighting that dissolved the serious movement? Arguably, it’s dubious as to exactly who and what event started it all. But what didn’t start it was a backlash against modern feminism. I can say that with certainty because a backlash is a response to a something else.

In fact, atheists were getting along fine until certain parties within gathered and decided that everyone else either agreed with their narrow gender politics and claims of harassment/mass oppression/rape apology, OR no one got to have a unified front to push back the primary driving force behind most of actual social injustice. Go figure: the group whining the loudest about injustice actually ensures the stagnation and dissolution of a movement opposing exactly what they were whining about in the first place. And then you throw a fit when it doesn’t work out and the majority isn’t interested in dropping everything to hang on to your every proclamation. Who would have imagined something so ironic?

To conclude, the outcome of the conflict you started (along the civil war theme) is as follows:

We (the Union) will inevitably stamp out the scourge that is the FtB fanaticism (that’s you, the South) when basically all of the relevant groups see the light of reason and leave you by the way-side. General William T. F00t’s scorched earth campaign has pretty much decimated your resources and left no idiot standing. General Ulysses S. Mykeru has either entirely defeated or cornered your leaders here while your stronghold of Atheism+ forums is all but deserted. Eventually, General Mykeru will capture your president Peezey, force him to surrender unconditionally, and then proceed to eat Generals Brayton, Watson, and Benson alive. General F00t will ensure Secretary of State J. Glenn and Chief Justice TJ Kincaid oversee movement Reconstruction, whilst F00t takes his place as Secretary of Education in President Dawkins’ Cabinet. President Dawkins’ cabinet is by far the most outstanding, and includes the noted Vice President Abbie Smith, Attorney General D.P.R. Jones, Secretary of Defense Sam Harris, and the famed Secretary of the Treasury Neil deGrasse Tyson. Your president Peezey will be sentenced to hard labor in Karen Straughan’s service; General Svan will be sentenced to a diet. You and the rest of your confederates will be expelled into Utah, the pit of Mormon, as punishment for your warmongering. May those crazy bike-riding, creepy, thieving missionaries have mercy on your souls.

They… they just so desperately want us in THEIR communities, which they think constitutes the entirety of “the movement”, that they’re willing to imagine having to kill people to subjugate us to their whims.

@James In His Own Arse, TL;DR … Can you summarise your basic thesis in less than a hundred flowery pseudo-intellectual words?

Oh OK, I did skim it, couldn’t your basic argument be used against you? Basically a bunch of under achieving testerical anti-feminists who work at bad quality photoshops all day rather than doing something? I think NonStampCollector summed it up nicely when he eviscerated the anti-FTB obsessives… Seriously dude, some people blog here, they like to blog about SJ and atheism, they sometimes criticise your gold plated idols, get over it.

Has anyone else noticed the inherent hypocrisy in the position of the anti-feminists? Dave up there illustrates it quite nicely.

Look at how much time and effort they spend, telling us not to spend time and effort on this because it’s ‘detracting’ from the ‘big fight’ against religion. If they really felt that way, wouldn’t they ignore all of us feminists (at the least) and get on with fighting against religious incursions they insist are so much more important? But no, he see screed after screed, often walls of text that really make it clear just how unimportant it must be, telling us feminists and feminist supporters 1) that we’re wrong; 2) that we are being divisive (another distinct display of hypocrisy here) and most importantly; 3) shut up, because that’s why!

It makes it quite clear to me, that although they recognize privilege, in the form of religious privilege, and feel it’s worth fighting against, like most people, they are blind to their own privilege. Or, worse, they are aware of it, and really really want to defend it.

It’s much like seeing so many black people in the US striving so hard to deny gay rights, using the exact same rhetoric now, that was used to describe them back in the 60s.

Sorry “James in my Own Ass”, but Neil deGrasse Tyson wouldn’t participate at all. He’d be content to sit back and watch, laughing, as y’all imploded around him.

Off topic… Jason… we need to talk about which “subscribe to comments” option you use. I wished you used the other one… the one you do use sucks because it doesn’t actually show formatting in emails. It just shows the code. :( Then again, if I’m the only one who feels that way, you can ignore me. :D

Back on topic… I still can’t think of any YouTubers besides Laci Green, ZOMGItsCriss, and Some Grey Bloke who turned out to be awesome.

I split my subscribe between the two methods — you’ll notice the checkboxes are a little offset? It’s because I really liked the “subscribe without commenting” option that the other one offers.

I’ll consider switching it. I get three notifications whenever someone subscribes when using the other option. It’s well and truly broken in a lot of ways but that subscribe without commenting is the killer feature I’ll miss.

Wait until James sees the future!!! (sorry for lengthy blockquote, the whole thing is just sooooo good…)

You find yourself drinking alone after work, seated at a wine-stained oaken table, deep in the Reconstruction District of Dworkonia. A long day of picking up heavy things and setting them down left your muscles sore and your brain numb with tedium, but you comfort yourself with the knowledge that your punishment is building towards a better future for the Femireich.

You start at a small scraping sound. Looking around—but carefully, so as not to Male Gaze anyone by mistake and extend your sentence further—you notice that a small trap door has opened in the Bikini Kill concert poster on the wall beside you. You peer closer, and a voice whispers to you within.

“We’ve been watching you. The Fourth Femireich is not what it seems. Rap twice on your table if you will join the Underground. Quickly.” You gasp, then try to hide your reaction from the Political Correctness Enforcement Cameras hovering in the corner of the bar, holding your mandated glass of rosé up to your mouth. As numb as you are, you still feel that another day of lifting and setting will not be enough.

You knock your knuckles on the rough wood, and with a sudden squealing of a giant screw, your table spins down into darkness. A hatch slams shut above you, and you find yourself in a pitch black chamber that smells of old soap and fine spirits. You haven’t smelled whiskey since…

“The Before Times,” a voice rumbles. Its baritone is fine and smooth, like the feeling of an old boat’s oars. A face floats out of the shadows, lit by the ruddy glow of an e-cigarette. It’s the face of a man who shaves just often enough to remind you he has to, and his eyes are blocked from your gaze by the lowered brim of his fedora.

“Yes! That smell reminds me of… of my father, and of his transactional relationships with all the women around him, and of the freedom to say whatever I want without consequence!”

A slight smile plays around the mouth of the stranger. “The fact that you even remember is what drew us to you. Most of the Betas have had the memories of life before the Femireich obliterated by the steady labor and numbing drugs they slip into your wine.”
“Then why do I know? Why do memories of the simple pleasure of shaving with a straight razor still come to me in dreams?”

“Because you’re strong enough for the truth. Haven’t you wondered why there are only Alpha and Beta males? The former studded out to have casual sex with every woman they meet, given license to violate the laws of the Franchise of Men, and the latter doomed to labor and open doors and screw in high-up lightbulbs?”

The shadowy figure chuckles as he vapes. “I can see you’ll fit right into the Men’s Underground. But no—they know Greek. They know it too well, studying it in their Ivory Maiden Towers, where they add ever-more rules to the Franchise of Men. The truth is, there are males even lower than the Betas. The Gammas are left chained in the Hirsute Caverns, and shaved of their natural manly hair every day. Their beards are used to stuff pillows for the Prelates of Purity. Their chest hair is woven into slippers for the young Matriarchs.”

You gasp in horror, imagining the indignity of a smooth-chested man, manfully grimacing as he is shorn against his will.

“And it gets worse. The Epsilons are forced, on bended knee, to cry into goblets at the feet of the Gynocrat’s Council. They drink deep of that bitter brew, drawing strength from the suffering of men. The Kappas are left locked up in the vast Sperm Fields, where they are harvested for their precious bodily fluids. You can hear your screams on windless days, if you are brave enough to stand atop the Wall of Macroaggression. And the Omegas? They are bound on rigid frames and turned into living furniture for the use of the High Empress herself.”

“I had no idea that it was this bad. I thought that… that this was temporary. That we are working for them to build a better empire, when men would be given back their rights.”

The room is silent for a moment, but for the sound of vaping and the tinkle of wine glasses from overhead. The stranger’s head is bowed, and you must strain to hear his gruff and honest words. “It’s worse than anyone knows. That’s why the Men’s Underground fights. We burn their stores of yarn and vegetarian foods. We tear down their lacy flag wherever we find it, and spit if someone mentions the name of the Femireich. We need new recruits. We need you. Will you join us?”

You hesitate for a long moment. What if the rumors of the Rendering Fields are true, where men are forced to manufacture scented candles for long years until they die of olfactory fatigue? But no. You know what you must do.

“I cannot stand by. I must join this fight. Freedom for all men.” You reach out to clasp the stranger’s hand, when suddenly the lights flare brightly around you. Where once the room was soaked in shadow, now there stand twenty women in the brilliant pink pantsuits you’ve feared for decades. The man in front of you reaches up and peels off his face and hat, revealing a woman who would be super hot if she wasn’t so bossy, so now she seems kind of unattractive. Her heels are lower than any woman’s you’ve seen and you pale with the realization that she’s the highest ranking member of the GP you’ve ever glimpsed outside of a recruitment poster.

She laughs, and where her deep voice had seemed pleasantly masculine before, now its timbre strikes fear into your heart. “What fools men are. Give them a hint of the truth, and they fall all over themselves to land in our honeypot.”

“But… does this mean the Gammas and Deltas don’t exist? That there is hope for men?” You are breathless with fear, but bold enough to challenge her.

She smirks. “Of course not. An outright lie is something only a man would tell. The Girlstapo would never stoop so far. There is no hope for men in the Femireich, little boy. The future is a sensible flat, stomping on a man’s face. Forever.” Two women seize you by your arms and begin to drag you away, and you are too stunned to struggle. The last words you hear before the velvet hood is cinched around your head are the Girlstapo chief’s orders to take you to the Friend Zone for processing.

That said, please don’t change your subscription method on my behalf. Like I said… if I’m the sole complainer, then feel free to ignore me. If everyone else is okay with it, then the problem (not saying there is one, but still) is me.

And I do have to grant the “subscribe without commenting” is quite nice. I do love that. I guess I just wish the emails from this option were actually formatted and didn’t come in as pure text with the code being shown, is all.

I actually use both “options” but differently — the “notify me of new posts by email” is from the other one, while the “notify me of followup comments” is from the quasi-broken one with the subscribe-without-commenting feature.

I’ve been thinking of disabling it anyway. I think only three people regularly use subscribe-without-commenting, myself excluded. I’ll maybe trial-run with the other way of doing things and see how it goes, and whether they complain.

What’s the connection between atheism and social justice? Just this: If there’s no gods, no Divine Plan, no gods-given guarantee that Good will necessarily win out over Evil, none of that happy horseshit… then that bad stuff will stick around until us humans fix that bad stuff. IMAO, social justice is basically a corollary of atheism. I’d consider it a necessary and desirable corollary of atheism, myself, and I have no desire to be associated with any person who actively repudiates social justice.

Big political fights are coming – and they won’t be about atheism. They will be, you guessed it, about social justice. So conservative white people are gatekeeping the atheist organizations, to avoid the possibility of some demographics using them as tools in those fights. The atheist organizations were important during the period of the culture wars (from the eighties of the 20th century till now), but the culture wars are clearly losing momentum and religious fundamentalism only retains appeal to old people now.
But if you read carefully what anti-feminists say, what comes out is fear of the radicalism. They express anger and irritation with feminist theory. That is very interesting. Intersectionality is a powerful tool that has been used by several kinds of opressed people to fight oppression, not only women. I think intersectionality has the potential to become the general revolutionary theory of our century, substituting Marxism, that has been dead for decades.
They have good reasons to fear, I guess.

Regarding James in the West’s comment above, as I remarked in Zvan’s thread:

You know what’s really funny?

This is the same guy who is trying to argue in one of my threads that people shouldn’t be rude or belittling and that we would be more successful at getting our point across if we were totally polite and professional in all our discourse.